Funny, as I was reading your article I pictured you- ala George C. Scott in the movie 'Patton' uniformed, spit-shined black boots, helmet, and rideing crop, paceing in front of a huge American flag giveing your speech to the troops-- *chuckles* Great article!

In the first place, there's a debate about whether or not Yates was mentally ill --

She was diagnosed by the doctors who treated her beforehand and by the psychiatrists who testified at the trial as having a preexisting diagnosis of schizophrenia and a comorbid present diagnosis of postpartum psychosis. 

In Texas, the law on insanity defenses is among the most restrictive in the nation. So narrow are the nuances of the state's centuries-old law that it was not enough for Yates' defense lawyers to simply prove that she twice attempted suicide, had been hospitalized four times for psychiatric care and nursed a psychosis before the drownings clearly documented in thousands of pages of medical records.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445-1,00.html

Are you talking about a "debate" between all of those highly educated professionals who make their living working with the mentally ill and your average Joe off the street who has no idea what they're talking about but who is just sure their opinion is as good as anybody else's?

If that's so, then what's the basis of your indignation about how others should give you extra credence because you actually work with the mentally ill?  After all, your inside information and/or actual experience shouldn't be given any special weight, should it, when anyone can just declare "some people disagree" and that makes all opinions equal?

Don't you think you'd much more comfortable if you removed that bible you have crammed up your a** Progo? Your atitude is far more disgusting towards women in general that Amanda's is.

Why don't you take your far-right wing views and go join a convent-- It's clear you'd fit right in, seeing as how you think like a anacronism from the middle ages. It's almost 2010 not 1010.

And if you don't like Ms. Marcott's comments stay off this site-- No one but your fundie friends really want to talk to you anyway-- So, please, stop commenting, we won't miss you. And if you favorite quote is any basis to go on, you are doomed to be forgotten by history anyway.

Anacronism: The intentional use of older, often obsolete cultural artifacts may be regarded as anachronistic.

Frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn-- Rhett Butler- Gone With The Wind.

Then there's the story about Christopher Erin Rogers (the one with a 309 year sentence and another murder trial pending).  Not only was there no evidence that this extraordinarily violent individual had any sort of mental illness, but the judge went out of his way to say that Rogers DIDN'T have a mental illness.

Judges not being psychiatrists, that's his opinion.

"Rogers' stepfather, Benny Kelly, sat outside the courtroom later. Kelly disagreed with the judge, who said there was no mental-illness defense for Rogers' case.

"He should have been living in my house when (Rogers) was living with us," Kelly said. Rogers stayed with the family for about two years in his mid-20s and would sometimes come home from his job at an Eagle River greenhouse convinced co-workers were trying to kill him with chemicals, Kelly said.

http://www.adn.com/front/story/1011564.html

In an uncommon move for a defendant facing murder charges, Rogers took the stand. "Sure, why not," he said when asked if he wanted to testify.

The story that emerged over three hours mixed clear recollections of three shootings with vague stretches spent wandering neighborhoods in Spenard and downtown.

He said he heard voices in his head, voices that got more insistent over years and especially in the three months before he killed his father and maimed his father's fiancee in Palmer -- the event that triggered his Anchorage shooting rampage leaving one person dead and two seriously injured.

...

Rogers told police the voices he heard were aliens because that's the only way he could think of to describe them. He didn't see a mother ship or anything. They kept telling him to wipe out the human race -- and there was a time limit. That's why he killed his father with a machete in Palmer and why he tried to kill his dad's fiancee.

It was a mission? Weber asked. A job? Rogers agreed.

"I thought they were aware it was coming," Rogers said about his victims. "Like they knew it was going to happen."

http://www.adn.com/erin-rogers/story/762455.html

You also could use another word for herself-- Bigot.

A bigot is a person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from his or her own, and bigotry is the corresponding attitude or mindset. Bigot is often used as a pejorative term to describe a person who is obstinately devoted to prejudices, especially when these views are either challenged, or proven to be false or not universally applicable or acceptable.

The origin of the word bigot and bigoterie in English dates back to at least 1598, via Middle French, and started with the sense of "religious hypocrite", especially a woman.

Thanks, from me and my 'boobies' *snirk*. I also hate having my breasts swished in a mamography machine. *ow!*

We can protect ourselves from violent people -- some of whom have a diagnosis and some of whom do not -- without fearing or restricting mentally ill people who aren't violent. 

We certainly can, but the only way to do so is to permanently lock up everybody who does shows signs of violence including those who might be able to live exemplary lives if they were taking their medication.

Do you somehow think that by scapegoating folks with a diagnosis we're going to prevent the next Andrea Yates catastrophe? 

If anyone, anyone AT ALL who was involved in that debacle had taken serious a diagnosis postpartum psychosis was, and how imperative it was for her to take her medication and/or not be left alone with those children, they would all still be alive.  There is a discernible difference between "scapegoating folks with a diagnosis" and recognizing that in reality SOME of the people with that diagnosis need reasonable interventions to protect both them and others.

Don't you think it kind of lacks compassion to insist people have the 'right' to refuse meds until they hurt someone and then at that point the government's 'compelling interest' in putting them on trial means they can be forced to take their meds so they can be tried and executed?  They can't be given meds to salvage their lives but it's okay if the ultimate purpose of doing so is punishment?

Now the real question is...why would you be saying those things sarcastically?

Perhaps because any of those descriptions would be a ludicrous caption under either of the photos in question?

I've set myself the task of demonstrating compassion for the racist without 1) excusing her/his behavior or 2) minimizing the destructive power of racism.

I've noticed that it's a lot easier to take up the task of "demonstrating compassion for the racist" if you don't happen to be a member of the race against whom he is bigoted and if you have never suffered any of the discrimination he insists on yourself.

But we weren't talking about 'compassion' originally, Paul, we were talking about who the victim is.  Your statement that "the bishops are also victims of homophobia" seems to me to imply some equivalency of victimhood - that the guy who lights the torch and the guy who burns in the fire are 'both victims'. 

I have lots of compassion for how far reality forces most people from being their best and highest selves and how far from ideally most tend to live their lives, but I'm afraid I still tend to have a little bit of extra compassion for the victims and be just a teensy less understanding of the 'suffering' the predators undergo when they choose to hurt others.

colleen,

I'd love to know what your point is, here.

In the first place, there's a debate about whether or not Yates was mentally ill -- but let's say she was.  How do you not notice that it's prejudicial to all the mentally ill people in this society to equate her actions with mental illness?

People actually go through bouts of major depression, or psychosis, or mania and then go on to live exemplary lives.  They often live under a stigma that is as real as the stigma blacks live under in a racist community.  It's a bona fide civil rights issue.

We can protect ourselves from violent people -- some of whom have a diagnosis and some of whom do not -- without fearing or restricting mentally ill people who aren't violent. 

Do you somehow think that by scapegoating folks with a diagnosis we're going to prevent the next Andrea Yates catastrophe? 

Paul Bradford

Pro-Life Catholics for Choice

Homosexuals are invisible to homophobes -- that is to say that the homosexual's humanity is invisible to homophobes.

I don't think that's true. I think that out homosexuals are a visible reminder to the homophobes of their own worries that they're inadequately 'manly' and are a threat to their sexist defense mechanism of restricting women to a very small range of acceptable activities and then declaring that masculinity can be 'proven' by eschewing those activities. One of the bases of that opinon is that I remember very clearly all the hysterical protests from traditionalists about how women being educated and getting jobs and controlling their own money was going to destroy everything by 'emasculating' men because men could only be 'manly' if the activities which they participated in weren't shared by women.

"Male prejudice against gay males is a form of sexism. It is part of male denigration of femaleness. The psychoanalyst Richard Isay has argued that fear of homosexuality per se is secondary in homophobic men to their fear and hatred of what they perceive as feminine in other men and in themselves.
...
Researchers using questionnaires and interviews have developed a profile of the homophobic person. He or she is authoritarian, status conscious, intolerant of ambiguity, and both cognitively and sexually rigid. But the homophobes thus profiled are motivated less by conventional sexual morality than by a desire to preserve a double standard between the sexes, that is, to preserve traditional-- traditionally sexist--masculine and feminine gender roles.

http://www.plu.sg/main/facts_04.htm